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Price on the media

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There are two ways of viewing TV franchises such as The Apprentice and
Dragons’ Den. The first is as just another form of debasement entertainment,
in which foolish, fame-obsessed youngsters degrade themselves before a panel
of monstrous egos. But they can also be viewed as a snapshot of an economy.
This is particularly true of RTE’s Dragons’ Den, in which there is less of
the schadenfreude that thrills British producers and more focus on ideas.

In the last series, barely an episode went by without a suggestion for an app
or a website, bolstering Ireland’s reputation as a hotbed for new media — a
perception reinforced by the presence of the new-media investor Sean
O’Sullivan as a dragon on the last panel and of Cisco’s Barry O’Sullivan on
the next.

So perhaps the jobs currently being lost in Ireland’s old media are being
replaced by opportunities in the new, with only